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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007

Wilkinson Power Divider Using Microstrip EBG

Cells for the Suppression of Harmonics
Chih-Ming Lin, Hsuan-Hung Su, Jui-Chieh Chiu, and Yeong-Her Wang, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis letter presents a planar power divider with an

effective technique for nth harmonics suppression. The proposed
technique served by a microstrip electromagnetic bandgap cell
is used to suppress the nth harmonics and reduce the length of
a quarter-wave line over 30% as compared to the conventional
divider. The planar structure enables an easy circuit design in
printed circuit boards. From the measured results, a 32.5 dB suppression for the third harmonic and a 12 dB suppression for the
fifth harmonic is obtained while maintaining the characteristics
of a conventional Wilkinson power divider. It is able to achieve
0.1 dB of the two equivalent insertion losses, less
less than 3.4
than 23 dB of the return loss, and better than 25 dB of isolation
at 2.4 GHz.
Index TermsElectromagnetic bandgap (EBG), harmonic suppression, planar, power combiner, power divider.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE power divider for an even number of two or more

output signals was first presented by J. Wilkinson in 1960
[1]. Wilkinson power dividers are widely used in various microwave applications such as power amplifiers, mixers, and frequency multipliers [2]. It is cost-effective if the unwanted harmonics are suppressed in the power divider or the combiner
structure. As a result, we can then eliminate additional harmonic
rejection filters from the microwave circuit and design a compact circuit.
Previously, a power divider for th harmonic suppression
consisted of two quarter-wave open stubs which are located at
the center of the quarter-wave branches that can be found in [3].
However, the physical dimension of a power divider is proportional to the wavelength of the center frequency. A Wilkinson
power divider with an asymmetric spiral defected ground structure (DGS) in a quarter-wave line for harmonics suppression
has been demonstrated [4]. As the ground plane is perforated,
the substrate must be suspended so that the circuits cannot be
fixed on a metal base for mechanical robustness. In order to
overcome the difficulty of realizing a nonplanar DGS, a 1-D
microstrip photonic bandgap (PBG) cell structure in the form
of perforations on the transmission line itself has been proposed

Manuscript received March 2, 2007; revised June 2, 2007. This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. under Contract NSC95-2221-E-006-428-MY3, and by the Foundation of Chen, Jieh-Chen
Scholarship, Tainan, Taiwan.
The authors are with the Institute of Microelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan,
R.O.C. (e-mail: yhw@eemail.ncku.edu.tw; yhw@eembox.ncku.edu.tw;
wangyher@mail.ncku.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2007.905595

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed power divider for harmonic

suppression.

[5]. Microstrip transmission lines incorporating the electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure exhibit band-stop and slow-wave
characteristics, which can be utilized to suppress unwanted harmonics and reduce the dimensions of the microstrip structure.
Furthermore, the compact 180 -ring hybrid and power divider
with a 1-D PBG perforated on the curved microstrip transmission line can be found in [6][8]. Overall, these papers emphasized the circuit dimension reduction due to the slow-wave effect. However, the microstrip EBG cell cannot only increase the
effective inductance of the transmission line but can also provide a function of the band-stop to reject unwanted harmonics.
This is the significant difference between this work and prior
works that used EBG cells.
In this letter, a planar power divider with two microstrip EBG
cells for harmonics suppression is presented. This has significant advantages in terms of planar circuit design, compact size,
and superior harmonic suppression.
II. DESIGN OF THE POWER DIVIDER FOR
HARMONICS SUPPRESSION
The configuration of the proposed power divider for harmonics suppression is shown in Fig. 1, which consists of two
microstrip EBG cells and four microstrip lines. The characteristic impedance of the microstrip lines connected to the input
, and the line length is L. Furthermore,
and output port is
the output ports are shunted with a parallel connection of
resistor .
In the transmission line theory [9], the propagation constant
of a lossless transmission line is a function of a distributed shunt
capacitance and series inductance per unit length. It indicates
that a slow-wave effect can be achieved by increasing the shunt
capacitance and series inductance in a transmission line. In this
letter, we propose a microstrip EBG cell, which is shown in
Fig. 2(a). This EBG cell can provide two resonances to suppress
the unwanted harmonics and reduce the length of a quarter-wave
line simultaneously. Correspondingly, this letter demonstrates

1531-1309/$25.00 2007 IEEE

LIN et al.: WILKINSON POWER DIVIDER

701

Fig. 3. Photograph of the fabricated power divider for harmonic suppression.

The dimension of the circuit is about 3 cm 2.5 cm.

Fig. 2. (a) Proposed microstrip EBG cell. (b) Lossless LC equivalent circuit.

the suppression of the third and fifth harmonic. By adjusting

the narrow connecting lines and the size of the etched pattern,
we can easily obtain different slow-wave effects at different frequencies to suppress the unwanted nth harmonics. This manner
is flexible for harmonic suppression. A thorough discussion of
this topology can also be found in [5], [10]. The corresponding
lossless equivalent circuit of the EBG cell is presented in
correspond
Fig. 2(b), where the inductors , , , and
to the transverse and longitudinal narrow connecting strips. The
capacitance
is the gap capacitance between the triangular
and
patch and the narrow connecting line. The capacitors
are the shunt capacitance of the triangular patch and rectangular patch, respectively.
We can calculate the resonant frequency by tuning the parameters of the lossless equivalent circuit then connecting
the EBG cell with microstrip lines to form a new configuration
of the power divider for harmonics suppression, as shown in
Fig. 1. The component values of the equivalent circuit are ob0.5 nH,
0.41 nH,
0.24 nH,
tained, where
0.24 nH,
0.21 pF,
0.15 pF, and
0.1 pF. The
equivalent circuit simulation is performed by employing Agilent
curve of the EBG equivalent circuit, the
ADS. By fitting the
designed dimensions of the structure, as shown in Fig. 2(a), are
1.9 mm,
3.5 mm,
4.2 mm,
4.9 mm,
0.1 mm,
3.1 mm,
3.9 mm,
0.1 mm,
3 mm,
3.2 mm, and
0.5 mm. In this design, IE3D is used in the electromagnetic (EM) simulation to
calculate the -parameters. By optimizing the EM simulation,
of the microstrip
we can attain the characteristic impedance

Fig. 4. Measured and the simulated insertion loss of the power divider.

lines of 100 , the line length of 4 mm, and the parallel resistor of 100 , which are similar to the ones for the conventional Wilkinson power divider. The sum of the microstrip
line length in the proposed power divider can be calculated by
2
. Due to the slow-wave effect of the EBG cell,
12.9 mm is much smaller than that of a
the dimension of
conventional quarter-wave length ( 19.7 mm) by 34.5%. Their
compact size occupies the area on the PCB in a more efficient
manner. Indeed, it is very amenable to a further integration of
the radio frequency (RF) front end.
III. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
To verify and demonstrate the proposed circuit, a power divider with a center frequency fixed at 2.4 GHz for harmonics
suppression was designed and implemented, as shown in Fig. 3.
A Rogers RO4003 PCB with a relative permittivity of 3.38 and
a 0.508 mm-thick substrate was used. The overall dimension of
the circuit was about 3 cm 2.5 cm. In order to obtain the exact
design, the SMA connecters were deembeded, and the -parameters of the chip resistors were also measured and taken into consideration in the design process. Finally, the -parameters were
measured using an Agilent PNA E8364A network analyzer.
as a funcFig. 4 illustrates the measured and simulated
tion of frequency. From the measured curve, it is shown that the

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007

TABLE I
PERFORMANCE SUMMARY OF POWER DIVIDER FOR HARMONICS SUPPRESSION

Fig. 5. Measured and the simulated return loss of the power divider.

of 2.4 GHz while suppressing the 7.2 GHz third-order harmonic

and the 12 GHz fifth-order harmonic simultaneously.
A comparison of the power dividers for the nth harmonics
suppression is summarized in Table I. As the results show, this
work presents a significant dimension decrease with fairly good
third and fifth harmonic suppressions as compared to the reported works.
IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 6. Measured and the simulated isolation of the power divider.

A new power divider/combiner for harmonics suppression

has been proposed and implemented. By employing microstrip
EBG cells, the novel circuit configuration can provide planar
structures with smaller circuit dimensions and suppress two har,
monics at the same time. As the measured results show, the
,
, and
at 2.4 GHz are 23 dB, 3.4 dB, 31 dB,
and 25 dB, respectively. These results show that the power divider has impedance matching at all ports, an equal power split
to the output ports, and inherent isolation between the output
,a
ports, simultaneously. Furthermore, from the measured
32.5 dB suppression for the third harmonic and a 12 dB suppression for the fifth harmonic can be obtained. The proposed
technique can be widely used to miniaturize circuit dimensions
and reject harmonics in various microwave circuits.
REFERENCES

power divider passes the 2.4 GHz fundamental signal, but reflects the 7.2 GHz third-order harmonic and the 12 GHz fifthat 2.4 GHz
order harmonic simultaneously. The measured
shows a power split of 3.4 dB; furthermore, the suppression
for the third-order harmonic is 32.5 dB, and for the fifth-order
harmonic, it is 12 dB. However, the measured -parameter is
shifted from the design goal of the fifth-order harmonic suppression 12 GHz to 11.5 GHz. The representation error for simulation and fabrication is due to the high-frequency parasitic effect.
From the measured and the simulated results, as shown in
Fig. 5, the circuit provides good return losses in the input port
as well as in the two output ports. The measured return loss of
is about 23 dB, and the other output terminals are better
than 30 dB at the operation frequency of 2.4 GHz. Therefore,
the designed circuit is well matched to the input port and to the
two output ports.
In Fig. 6, the measured and simulated isolation of the two
output ports are shown. Fairly good agreements between the
measured and the simulated results can be achieved. The measured isolation between ports 2 and 3 is better than 25 dB. These
results indicate that the proposed power divider operates well as
a conventional Wilkinson power divider at the center frequency

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